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Critical incident declared by Ambulance Service
21/12/2022
999 calls are up 50% on this time last year
South Central Ambulance Service has declared a critical incident as it faces what it describes as “extreme pressure” which escalated over the weekend and has continued into this week.
The service says that 999 calls are up 50% on this time last year. 111 calls are up 75% over the same period.
This is combined with challenges of ambulances being unable to handover the care of their patients at some acute hospitals, which prevents crews getting back on the road to respond to other calls.
Declaring a critical incident means the service can focus resources on those patients most in need. The announcement came ahead of today’s industrial action by members of the GMB union, although the service says that this will mostly impact their non-emergency patient transport service.
In the face of the Critical Incident people are being asked to only call 999 for life-threatening emergencies and to use NHS 111 online for urgent medical advice wherever possible.
Mark Ainsworth, Director of Operations at SCAS, said: “Last week was an extremely difficult week, which has only escalated over the course of the weekend and into this week, leading to us declaring a critical incident.
“I am extremely proud of how hard our staff and volunteers are working to meet the demand. We have implemented a range of measures to help us manage the significantly increased level of activity we are seeing.
“This has included bringing in additional staff to put more vehicles on the road, increasing the number of call takers working both on site and remotely and providing more clinical support and advice by phone for those patients not suffering life-threatening emergencies.”
Published: by Banbury FM Newsteam